Les Deux Anglaises et Le Continent ( 1971 )

While recovering at home from a leg injury, Claude (Jean-Pierre Léaud) meets Anne Brown (Kika Markham), the daughter of his mother's old friend, who has come to France to study art. She invites Claude to spend the summer with her sister Muriel (Stacey Tendeter) and her mother at their seaside cottage in Wales, an invitation that he accepts. Once there, Anne conspires to play matchmaker between Claude and Muriel and, over the course of the summer, succeeds. Claude wishes to marry Muriel but she feels that this is only a passing infatuation and declines his offer but later changes her mind. Their parents come to the decision that it is best if they were to separate for a year and then, if they still feel the desire to marry, they may do so. But once back in Paris, Claude has affairs with other women and does indeed realize that his love for Muriel was temporary. Anne, who is once again in Paris studying art, begins to see Claude more often and the two embark on an affair themselves. 

Les Deux Anglaises et Le Continent aka Two English Girls was based on the 1956 novel of the same name by Henri-Pierre Roché who also wrote "Jules et Jim". That novel told the story of a young woman who was in love with two men. "Les Deux Anglaises" inverts this premise. The book and the film center on Claude's indecision between his feelings for both sisters whom he met while yet a teenager. It is set during the early 1900s and spans nearly twenty years of Claude's life. It is a sad story but one which the audience can easily relate to. Claude obviously enjoyed his summer with both sisters and, as he got older, found it difficult to love one without the possibility of exploring his feelings for the other sister as well. Once having done so, he was all the more confused about whom he really loved the most. 

It is harder for the audience to sympathize with Muriel. She feels as though she is unworthy of Claude even though she knows him to be untrue to her, and so she continues to spurn him...which only serves to drive him away. 

The film is filled with many beautiful images symbolic of what the characters are feeling, but it is also very crude, very frank, and quite erotic. Director Francois Truffaut (who also directed Jules et Jim) acknowledged that "the film was so romantic, possibly even melodramatic, that it had to be balanced by some very physical scenes." This did not go over well with audiences. In France, the reception to the film was so bad that Truffaut pulled it from the theatres and re-edited it. Years later, he succeeded in adding back twenty minutes that he had originally cut. 

"Rather than a film about physical love, I have tried to make a physical film about love." - Truffaut

The harsh reception that the picture received disappointed Truffaut who considered it to be his best film up to that time. It has only been in recent decades that Les Deux Anglaises et Le Continent has been acknowledged to be the fine film that it is. 

Les Deux Anglaises is not a happy picture and it is devoid of humor, but it is beautiful, both in its cinematography (by Nestor Almendros) and in its soulful expression of despair. The film plays out like a novel. It is filled with numerous vignettes that resemble short rich chapters that you want to re-read again and again. Almendros avoids close-ups and, instead, stunning long shots of the Welsh landscape are mixed with medium shots and various techniques from Truffaut's bag of tricks which include superimpositions, lightning-fast cuts, fade-ins and the iris effect (reminiscent of The Music Man). 

"Between them was a dead girl whom they would not name. Only a child would restore the trio that they once were."

Kika Markham is excellent as level-headed Anne, as is Stacey Tendeter as Muriel, who appears to be more sensible than she acts. However, Jean-Pierre Léaud makes a rather childlike main character. His thin frame emphasizes his boyish features. Perhaps this was what Truffaut intended, but a stronger leading man would have made the film even more compelling. Claude, who puts on the airs of being a mature adult, seems to be only a boy who cannot make up his mind to what - or whom - he desires. 

Throughout the film, there is the voice of the narrator who acts as an omniscient presence to relate to us the feelings of the characters, primarily Claude. Without the authoritative voice of this narration (the voice of Truffaut himself), the film may have suffered from relying upon only Léaud's presence. 

While the characters in the novel were based on Henri-Pierre Roché's own feelings, Truffaut felt that the novel also reflected the situation that the Bronte sisters were in, with both of them longing for the love of their half-brother Branwell. Throughout the film, Claude and Muriel relate to going back to their "brother-sister" relationship, realizing they could never be lovers when they feel such a close sibling-like bond to each other. 

Truffaut also suffused the film with a sadness which he was experiencing at the time. Shortly before filming began, Truffaut had been treated for severe depression. Like Claude, he too was in love with two sisters - the actresses Catherine Deneuve and Françoise Dorléac - one of whom had died only three years before he began work on the film. 

Two English Girls is currently available on DVD in an excellent Criterion Collection release and through the Criterion Channel. 

Le Voyage en ballon ( 1960 ) aka Stowaway in the Sky

After the success of the award-winning short film The Red Balloon ( Le Ballon Rouge, 1956 ), French director Albert Lamorisse embarked on creating a feature-length film with a similar visual emphasis to the narrative.

Le Voyage en Ballon follows the journey of an inventor/balloonist ( André Gille ) and his stowaway grandson Pascal ( Pascal Larmorisse ) as they circle high above the skies around France. The boy is delighted to join his grandfather on his adventure and we, the audience, are able to share in this young balloonist's view of France, soaring high above Brittany, sailing along the southern coast, and traversing the Alps. 

This scenic tour of the country is reminiscent of PBS's travel series "Visions of..." which featured helicopter aerial footage of France, Italy, Germany, England, etc. accompanied by classical and regional music. 

Le Voyage en Ballon has a storyline but it is the view of France itself that takes center stage. Jean Prodromides composed a magnificent soundtrack to accompany the tour with each piece tailored to the featured location of the scenes. The segment featuring "Les grands voiliers - Goëmons" ( "The Tall Ships" ) is especially grand and the music seems to capture in its melody the rich history of the men at sea as well as the thrill that Pascal feels of seeing sailing vessels racing on the open waters. 

This little boy was director Albert Lamorisse's son Pascal. He had previously starred in Le Ballon Rouge and later, when his father was killed in a helicopter crash while filming the documentary Le Vent des amoureux ( The Lover's Wind ), Pascal and his mother completed the picture. Today, he oversees his father's film company and the restoration of his short films. 

Le Voyage en ballon also featured Maurice Baquet as Tout-Tout the mechanic, a character similar to Passepartout from Around the World in 80 Days. He is a loyal companion to the balloonists but has a tendency to get himself into mischief. 

In the United States, Le Voyage en ballon was issued as Stowaway in the Sky two years later with Jack Lemmon as narrator. Lemmon loved the picture so much that he purchased the American release rights to it. The film was beautifully filmed in Eastman color and was nominated for a Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1960. 

Currently, it is not available on DVD but the English-narrated version can be found online. 

Tintin et le Temple du Soleil ( 1969 )

Tintin, the beloved comic book creation of Belgium illustrator Herge, was transferred to the big screen as a fabulous full-length feature film in 1969 - Tintin et le Temple du Soleil. It was based upon one of Tintin's most famous escapades, his search for the missing Professor Calculus and a band of archeologists who are under the spell of an ancient Incan curse. The film took the two-part adventure ( from the books The Seven Crystal Balls and The Prisoner of the Sun ) and condensed it into one 77-minute film.

This was a French production from Belvision studios and the animation is spot-on, matching Herge's style as closely as if the artist himself painted each cel. This isn't surprising, considering Raymond LeBlanc was the producer of the film. LeBlanc was the publisher of the original Tintin magazine series, as well as the founder of Editions du Lombard and Belvision Studios. He was a giant in the Belgium animation industry, much like Walt Disney was here in the States. 

In 1957, Belvision brought the Tintin stories to television as an animated serial of five-minute episodes which covered seven of Hergé's most popular books. The success of this series made the studio attempt two animated feature-length films: Asterix the Gaul ( 1967 ) and Asterix and Cleopatra ( 1967 ), both featuring the comic strip character Asterix. These films were great successes and it led them to bring Tintin to the screen. 

Tintin and the Temple of the Sun differs only slightly from Hergé's original story, with a few additional scenes added and Thompson and Thompson ( the twin detectives ) getting a much larger role. Like the book series, however, it is filled with adventure and plenty of opportunities for Captain Haddock to lose his temper..."Ten thousand thundering typhoons!!"  Beautiful music by François Rauber also enhances the picture. 

Three years later Tintin returned for Tintin and the Lake of Sharks which featured many of the same actors voicing the characters. Both pictures are available on DVD in their original French language version and dubbed in English. 

Les Anges Du Péché ( 1943 ) aka Angels of Sin

"If you hear God's word joining you to another, listen to no other words - they are merely its echo." - St. Catherine of Siena

Director Robert Bresson's first feature film, the underrated gem Les Anges du Péché aka Angels of Sin, explores the indistinguishable line between will and chance and the effect people have in determining each other's destinies, a theme that resonated throughout Bresson's later works (The Diary of a Country Priest, A Man Escaped). 

The story follows Sœur Anne-Marie (Renée Faure) a young bourgeois-born novice at a Dominican convent who is convinced that she was sent by God to save the soul of Sœur Thérèse (Jany Holt), an impenitent murderess who joins the order to seek shelter from the police. 

Father Bruckberger, an acquaintance of Bresson's, had suggested he read "The Dominicans of the Prisons" by Father Lelong and proposed a film about the Sisters of Bethany in France, an order of nuns devoted to working with female ex-convicts. The order, founded in 1866, gives these women the opportunity to overcome the sins that led them to become criminals. Some choose to remain at the convent and become nuns while others venture on to begin a new life. 

Although Bresson was ignorant of Bethany, he was intrigued by the premise and developed an engrossing scenario around it that weaves in key elements that Bresson would return to in every subsequent film he made. He was particularly fascinated with the theme of two lives coming together and forging a preordained course, one which ends in redemption for both. 

While Sœur Anne-Marie is the main character in Les Anges du Péché and dominates the majority of the scenes, her presence is merely a clever red-herring from Bresson for the film is truly about Sœur Thérèse. It is her soul's redemption that is the driving force of the picture, and all the events that take place at the abbey from the day of her arrival act as stepping stones of grace leading up to her redemption. 

In one scene, the nuns gather for a ceremony where each sister receives a maxim, a randomly chosen quote, that will become their motto for the year. These maxims miraculously suit the personality of each sister. St. Catherine's quote about hearing "God's word joining you to another" is handed to Anne-Marie and has a particularly awe-inspiring effect upon her because she felt an invisible Hand drawing her towards the prison, specifically towards Thérèse, ever since she arrived at the convent. 

Evidently, Sœur Anne-Marie's heavenly calling to save such a lost lamb as Thérèse was conceived before she even meets her, but she ultimately succeeds in her task only when she comes to recognize her own failures and humble herself. Her optimistic determination to accomplishing what she considers God's will, and her pride in her divine vocation, others perceive merely as sinful arrogance. She recognizes this when she subjects herself to "sisterly correction" and goes cell to cell asking each sister "How do you value me?". She finds that they see her as being selfish, ambitious, and showing no understanding of others. The nuns do not recognize her irrepressible fervor as being a sign of deeper spirituality. Only Thérèse refuses to rebuke her. 

Thérèse considers herself dead to sin. She is unrepentant. She has accomplished her murderous act of revenge towards the man who let her be wrongfully incarcerated and is now the most obedient nun at the convent, finding life there preferable - if not dissimilar - to life imprisonment. Yet, she is impatient with Anne-Marie's chastenings and is relieved when the prioress sends Anne-Marie away from the convent, not realizing that even that act is simply another step leading her towards her preordained destiny - the path of redemption.

Robert Bresson would later favor a sparse naturalistic approach to filming, using a minimum amount of background music, little dialogue, and completely renouncing professional actors. Les Anges du Péché and Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne (1945) were the only two films he made with professional actors, a choice which he strangely regretted. Bresson, who in his Notes cautioned himself against drawing "tears from the public with the tears of your models" failed to realize that naturalism can only entertain to a point. Its novelty wears off and the audience yearns to see emotions and characterizations that professional actors demonstrate best.

The performances of Renée Faure, Jany Holt, and Louise Sylvie (as La Prieure) are expressive and beautiful and add depth to the characters in such a subtle way that non-professional actors could not have accomplished. Holt, in particular, gives a touching understated performance while Faure is convincingly innocent and saintlike.

A strong supporting cast (Mila Parély, Silvia Monfort, Louis Seigner), gorgeous cinematography by Philippe Agostini, and a powerful score by Jean-Jacques Grünenwald add up to making this an impressive directorial debut from Bresson and a true French cinema classic. 

The Death of the Swan : The Unfinished Dance ( 1947 ) and Ballerina ( 1937 )

This weekend Christina Wehner is hosting the En Pointe Blogathon, a three-day event celebrating films that spotlight that beautiful and centuries old form of dance known as ballet. One of the most overlooked Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer films of the 1940s - The Unfinished Dance - just so happens to revolve around ballet, and so I have chosen to call attention to this rarity as well as to Ballerina ( 1937 ) which is based on the same story. 

Both pictures are about a ballet student who accidentally cripples a famous ballerina when she throws the switch to the onstage trap door, plummeting the dancer to her career-ending doom. 

"Is she dead?"
"She broke her leg..... For a dancer, it is worse than death"

In The Unfinished Dance ( 1947 ), Margaret O'Brien stars as Meg Merlin, the passionate little dancer who quickly becomes wracked with guilt for the dreadful deed she committed in haste. This orphaned child loves ballet and, particularly one ballerina - Ariane Bouchet ( Cyd Charisse ) whom she worships as an idol. When La Darina ( Karin Moore ), a guest ballerina, arrives to perform the lead in "Swan Lake" in place of Bouchet, Meg plans to humiliate the prima ballerina by turning off the lights during the performance, leaving Darina to grope in the dark. Instead, she - oops! - pulls the wrong switch causing Darina to literally perform her swan song. Meg, then, struggles with her conscience and attempts to muster the courage to confess her crime to La Darina, the woman she once hated but is quickly coming to love...especially when she discovers that Bouchet isn't the grand idol she thought she was. 

The Unfinished Dance was based on a novella by Paul Morand entitled "La Mort du Cygne" ( "The Death of the Swan" ). This intriguing story was first filmed in 1937 as La Mort du Cygne aka Ballerina, a French production directed by Jean Benoit-Levy and Marie Epstein. It was a box-office sensation in Europe, won the Grand Prix du Cinèma francais award, and earned equal critical acclaim in America. Over the years, a legendary aura has been cast around it, primarily because it was considered a lost classic; it was only in 2000 that a surviving print was discovered. 

While The Unfinished Dance bears some resemblance to the original film, it cannot - and should not - be compared to Ballerina as a remake. They are two separate films with marked differences. One major contrast between them is the underlying theme of the pictures. In Ballerina, it is all about the dance. To dance is to live; to dance is to breathe.

"The Dance is greater than all our personal troubles," remarks Karine in one scene. 

In The Unfinished Dance, Meg's guilt takes center stage. Ballet becomes Meg's redemption. Director Henry Koster did a wonderful job of creating a disquieting atmosphere of tension in all of the scenes featuring O'Brien. Meg is a hapless victim of a foolish and childish prank that she herself conceived and her guilt causes her to see the jail bars closing in on her. Every whisper is a personal threat to her safety. Every policeman an agent of Justice out to capture her. Margaret O'Brien plays out the psychological tension that Meg feels with great skill, especially considering she was only nine-years-old at the time of filming, while Koster treats these sequences as though it were Robert Mitchum on the screen, running from another thoughtless crime he committed in haste. 

However, audiences didn't appreciate this peek into the mind of a child criminal, and the film lost nearly $1,800,000 upon its release. It was the only Joe Pasternak production to ever lose money. This may have been due to false marketing. Posters displayed happy images of O'Brien and Charisse performing grand jetés while the subtitles heralded "Romance! Spectacle! Music!" Audiences were undoubtedly expecting a saccharine MGM musical featuring the always adorable Margaret O'Brien and, in the opening sequences, this is what they were treated to....but then, the real story of The Unfinished Dance begins to unfold and the film becomes a unique blend of a Technicolor family drama and a Columbia Pictures film noir. It was a mixture too heady for youngsters, and too juvenile for adult audiences. 

Ballerina, on the other hand, was marketed as a haunting melodrama, which indeed it was. Ballerina evokes, through long shadows and striking camera angles, the atmosphere of the Opera de Paris as the dancers saw it. It was not the glittering Parisian palace that came alive only at night, but a working studio where the dust of wood shavings and talcum powder filled the air. Blanche-Levy had the cast and crew live at the Palais Garnier for weeks prior to filming so that they could feel that majestic atmosphere that the ballerinas felt and convey it to the screen. The result is an engrossing peek at the all-consuming world of ballet. 

Throughout the film, we are given scenes of the backstage life: "flies" in their perches, crewmen setting a stage, and ballerinas in class and in their dressing rooms stretching, leaping, flexing their feet, and adjusting their shoes and tutus. In one scene we witness prima ballerina Yvonne Chauviré placing padding on her toes and then slowing tying her pointe shoes. 

Ballerina also contrasts against The Unfinished Dance by portraying the children as unsentimental little savages - which they are. In the tradition of the Opera de Paris, young student ballerinas are referred to as "rats", and Meg Merlin is here cleverly named Rose Souris ( souris meaning mouse in French ).

Rose is no mere child who accidentally moves a wrong lever. She is a twelve-year old girl who deliberately sets to put an end to the career of Karine ( the character of La Darina in The Unfinished Dance ), slowly moving the heavy wooden supports that keep the trap-door closed and then waiting to hear the music of the swan as Karine approaches the trap. After her deed is done she feels occasional pangs of guilt ( this is eerily conveyed to the audience through the sound of a violin-solo playing the Swan theme ), but she has no desire to confess her crime to her victim. It is only when Karine discovers what she did via an anonymous letter that Rose asks for her forgiveness. Seeing the grand ballerina hobble on her cane every day is her punishment. 

Perhaps in order to satisfy the Hayes Code, MGM made the lead character much younger and dampened her act of viciousness by making it an accident. The screenwriters also attempted to give reason to Meg's consuming adulation of Mademoiselle Bouchet by making her a motherless child. In the French film, Rose lives with her mother. Meg's only relation is her flighty aunt whom we glimpse just twice. To atone for this lack of parental guidance there is "Uncle" Paneros ( Danny Thomas in his screen debut ), a kindly Greek who operates a watch shop below Meg's apartment. He becomes a father figure for Meg while we are to assume that Mlle. Bouchet - and, later, La Darina - is the mother that Meg wishes she had. 

"In you, I'm going to dance again. You're not going to fail me, are you?" - La Darina

"I'd die first." - Meg

Danny Kaye was originally cast in the role of Mr. Paneros and indeed would have been ideal because he would have lent some comedy to the film, which it sorely needed. The dramatics are too heavy in certain scenes. In spite of the noir tone of the original Ballerina, that film's drama was interspersed with bits of typical French humor. Instead, Danny Thomas was given the opportunity to perform and he quickly steals every scene he is in, adding warmth to the picture if not comedy. He also boasts a fine singing voice. 

Most of the dancing in The Unfinished Dance focuses on O'Brien ( a merely adequate dancer ) and Cyd Charisse, a true ballerina turned actress. She displays her spectacular terpsichorean talent in six production numbers, including a performance of David Rose's "Holiday for Strings". Charisse's best dance is to the music of Bedrich Smetana's "The Bartered Bride", where, among a gold-and-purple corps de ballet, she makes a grand entrance in a gold costume pirouetting into the camera. 

Karin Booth was not a dancer and so, in her two ballet sequences, a professional dancer took her place for the long shots. La Darina's highlight performance is "Swan Lake" which was a pastiche of the second and fourth "white" acts of Tchaikovsky's classic staged to create an ethereally beautiful effect with a bevy of Cygnus-like ballerinas dancing atop a mirrored floor. David Lichine was the choreographer for all of the ballets in The Unfinished Dance. 

In Ballerina, the dance sequences are exceptional, which is not surprising considering all three principal characters were portrayed by celebrated ballerinas. Janine Charrat ( Rose ) was a child prodigy, choreographing her first ballet at age 14. She had a long career as a dancer and choreographer. Charrat was only 13 when Ballerina was made. 

Yvette Chauviré ( Mlle. Beaupre ) was a famed étoile of the Paris Opéra Ballet and still considered by many to be France's greatest classical ballerina. Mia Slavenska ( Karine ) was an international star and a renowned ballerina from the 1930s-1960s, after which time she became a much sought-after ballet instructor here in the States. In 2014, PBS aired Mia: A Dancer's Journey, a fascinating documentary by her daughter Maria Ramas, which is well worth viewing. 

Considering that these dancers had no formal acting training they are quite good in their roles in Ballerina. However, Benoit-Levy should have filmed them in a more natural continuous style of filming. Instead - like most pictures of the 1930s - he uses close-ups excessively. In many scenes, it is obvious that these close-ups were filmed separately from the medium-shots. These abrupt edits block the fluidity of the film. And, unfortunately, an additional twenty minutes was cut from the original print for the US release, so connecting elements of the story are missing. 

Nevertheless, Ballerina is a classic in its genre, noted for being one of the best ballet films of the 1930s. Ballet enthusiasts today are grateful to be able to see performances from Slavenska and Chauviré captured for posterity on camera. 

Both The Unfinished Dance and Ballerina showcase the art of ballet in a wonderful manner and hopefully have inspired audiences then and today to embrace this beautiful form of dance. Personally speaking, these two titles alone have elevated my appreciation of ballet to new heights and introduced me to dancers I was previously unaware of. 

Ready to explore more ballet films? Check out all the great posts at the headquarters of the En Pointe Blogathon being hosted by Christina Wehner. Also, take some time to watch the two films you just read about: The Unfinished Dance ( also available on DVD through Warner Archives ) and Ballerina aka La Mort du Cygne. 

Edwige Feuillère - La Grande Actrice Française

On November 13, 1998, the day that Edwige Feuillère died, France mourned. A beloved icon of the silver screen and the grand dame of the Paris theater had passed on and the wave of tributes that poured in befitted a political head of state. 

"Many actresses have been called La Divine, but none deserved it as much as Edwige Feuillère," wrote James Kirkup. Indeed, her talent was world-renowned and some critics, after seeing her perform live, considered her the greatest actress of the 20th century. She was Katharine Cornell, Greer Garson, Anne Baxter, Googie Withers, and Ann Sothern all rolled into one...and yet she was completely, and uniquely, Feuillère...with long slender hands, a beautiful smile, mesmerizing eyes, and a commanding film presence. 

The New York Times wrote for her obituary, "Stunningly beautiful in her youth, gracefully elegant in old age, Ms. Feuillère was remembered as much for her powerful well-modulated voice as for her expressive eyes and magnetic presence". 

Edwige Feuillère ( pronounced Edweej Foolyair ) had an impressive career which spanned over 60 years. During that time she starred in several notable plays which will be forever associated with her name : "La Dame aux Camelias" ( Camille ), "L'Aigle a deux Tetes" ( The Eagle with Two Heads ), and "La Folle de Chaillot" ( The Madwoman of Challiot ).

Feuillère was born Edwige Louise Caroline Cunati in Vesoul, France in 1907. Her mother was Alsace-born but her father was an Italian, and since he was drafted by the Italian army during World War I, Edwige spent much of her childhood in Italy. After the war, her family moved to Dijon, France, where Edwige performed in school plays and later studied acting at the Dijon Conservatoire. She met her husband Pierre Feuillère, a fellow acting student, while studying at the Paris Conservatoire in 1928. Two years later they married, but Pierre was a suicidal drug addict and the union lasted only two years. She never remarried and instead devoted herself to acting. 

Feuillère did not become an overnight success on stage or in films, even though she was made a member of the prestigious Comédie Française as early as 1931. It was her success in Edouard Bourdet's "La Prisonniere" at the Theatre Heberthot in 1935 that really gained her recognition as an actress. That same year she scandalized the public by appearing nude in the film version of the historical drama Lucrèce Borgia ( Lucrezia Borgia ). 

Feuillère's regal presence lent a classical stature to modern plays, which were often modeled on Greek themes, and playwrights such as Jean Giraudoux and Jean Cocteau continually pursued her to act in their latest works. Edwige had many roles that she would perform again and again on stage. She brought out a special quality in the characters she took on, making them uniquely her own. After having performed a part once, she would become known for that character. 

Her greatest stage triumph was as a femme fatale in Paul Claudel's "Partage de Midi". It was a lengthy and immensely difficult part which had long been admired for its dramatic poetry but was often considered unperformable. Director Jean-Louis Berrault transformed Claudel's metaphysical text into one of the most memorable coups de theatre of the century, and Feuillère's performance was never replicated. 

In 1939 she played Margeurite Gautier in Alexandre Dumas' "La Dame aux Camelias" in Paris. This would become her most recognized role which she would perform throughout the next twenty years. The play's director, Jacques Hebertot, accurately predicted, "You will carry this role throughout your life, a slave to the success it will bring you." Feuillere was also considered the "definitive Phaedre" and performed scenes from this Racine classic as well as many other of his works throughout her career. 

In film, she portrayed a charming spy opposite Erich von Stronheim in 1937's Marthe Richard au Service de la France ( Marthe Richard ), an elegant traveler in La Damme de Malacca ( Woman of Malacca ), and an adventuress in J'étais une Aventurière ( 1938 ). In Max Ophuls' 1940 melodrama Sans Ledemain ( Without Tomorrow ) she gave an excellent performance of a jaded woman abandoned with a load of debts by her shady husband.

Woman of Malacca ( 1937 )

Feuillère kept herself busy throughout the 1940s, averaging two films per year while starring in numerous stage productions both in France and England, notably in L'Aigle a deux Tetes, which she appeared in over 200 performances. In this production she played a queen who falls in love with her would-be assassin, a young man that resembles her late husband. It was a role that Jean Cocteau had created for her. She reprised her performance in Cocteau's 1947 film adaptation starring opposite the handsome Jean Marais, who became a dear personal friend. 

Other notable film productions of the 1940s included De Mayerling a Sarajevo ( Mayerling to Sarajevo ) where she portrayed Countess Sophie Choteck, wife of Archduke Franz Ferdinand; the screen adaptation of La Duchesse de Langeais ( 1942 ); and L'Honorable Catherine ( 1942 ). 

L'Aigle a deux tetes ( 1947 )

During World War II, Parisian society had such a watchful eye on Edwige the First ( a nickname the French critics gave their number one actress ) that when she wore an evening gown in public for the first time after abstaining from formal wear throughout the war years, all Paris "smiled again". Fashion houses throughout the city stocked up on scarce fabrics, anticipating an after-war boom in sales now that Edwige signaled that evening wear was once again appropriate. 

"I wish American producers would bring their plays here," Edwige stated in a 1946 Collier's magazine article. "I have met so few American actors. I would like to meet more." The New York play Arsenic and Old Lace was playing to standing-room only audiences in Paris at the time. Intellectual Parisians, like Edwige, were thoroughly familiar with American writers. She was able to quote passages from the works of Hemingway, Steinbeck, and Faulkner and was intensely interested in American novels, plays, and actors. 

She also desired to visit America, especially Hollywood, but wanted to remain in France until the war years were over. This reason made her decline the 7-year contract offered by Louis B. Mayer, head of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios. It proved to be a rather foolish career move as Mayer would have surely seen to it that only the best scripts would be used in quality productions to showcase her acting ability ( and knowing Mayer, they would have been based on literary classics as well ). Instead, many of her films were mediocre and beneath her ability. 

As Mlle. Julie in "Olivia"

But Feuillère was not particular about the film roles offered to her, and in her freedom she tackled anything from comedies ( the delightful Les Fruits de l'été ), crime films ( Quand la femme s'en meme ), and capers ( OSS 117 ) to classical historical dramas ( Le Duchess de Langeau ). A true thespian, she loved acting for the sake of acting and the more challenging, or different, the part was the more it thrilled her. She gladly accepted roles that other actresses would have refused for fear of their careers being endangered. 

This desire to broaden her range led her to star in the 1951 screen adaptation of Dorothy Strachey's sensational book Olivia which centered on a schoolgirl's crush for her teacher, the charismatic Mlle. Julie. This role earned her accolades ( including a BAFTA nomination for Best Actress ) and she followed it up with an even more daring performance as an older women who introduces an adolescent to love in Le Blé en Herbe ( 1953 ). Feuillère was brilliant in the role and deftly suggested prurience sans impropriety. 

Le Blé en Herbe ( 1954 )

Off-screen, Edwige had little interest in the glamorous lifestyle often associated with movie stars and her 1977 autobiography "Les Feux de la Memoire" revealed her to be humorous and modest about her talent. She concentrated on stage work throughout the 1960s, appearing once again in "Partage de Midi" in London, touring with Jean Marais on stage, and starring in Giraudoux's "La Folle de Chaillot" which she later reprised for television. Edwige embraced television and often appeared in mini-series during the 1970s and 1980s, notably Les Dames de la Cote and later Edwige Feuillère en Scene ( 1993 ) a television movie based upon her popular stage show in which she replayed scenes from her most famous roles. 

Edwige retired from the stage in 1992, but continued to be recognized for her contributions to the French stage being awarded the Legion d'honneur, the Molière prize, an honorary César, and was named Commandeur des Arts et Lettres. 

Upon hearing of the death of her good friend Jean Marais, Edwige suffered a heart attack from which she never recovered and she passed on five days later, at the age of 91. 

Fortunately, many of her films are available for viewing on Youtube, and even without an understanding of French one can appreciate her acting style.